Main Menu

Lets Raid Some Tombs!! (Optional Tombs)

Before I even start this review I have to state first and for most; I WILL NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO TALK ABOUT THE ORIGINAL SERIES!! Now that that’s over with welcome to my review on the PS3 version of Tomb Raider, the new one of course, and a quick review on the multiplayer of Tomb Raider game; I will be going into as much detail as possible on the game play, the story and finally extra stuff (Visuals, sound or anything else that might be worth noting) How this is going to work is I am going to badly type up a review on each segment and give it a score.

Story

The main story of this game is very simple: Lara Croft Pre-Badassererery!!!! The story behind that is that Lara and her crew are stranded on a island that is fueled by a mystical force that won’t let them leave. Lara must find that Yamatai (the mystical force behind the island) and defeat an evil cult that is worshiping the Yamatai! Honestly, the main problem with the story is how contrived it feels at the worst times and when it doesn’t feel contrived it feels just plain mean and not in a fun mean way! Every other scene, it feels like, is just a torture fest staring Lara Croft; within the first ten minutes of the game Lara gets kidnapped, skewered, burned, and shot at! None of this would be a problem with these were punishments for doing quick times wrong (I’ll get into THAT in the gameplay) but this is what happens when you do it right!! There are a few story elements implemented into gameplay that just don’t work, you are not allowed to use your climbing axe for melee initially for example, and distract from the over all gaming experience. I’ll be going over four of the important story characters now, there are a good amount of characters but I will only go over four.

Lara Croft

Our hero!! Lara is a young archeologist who is thrust into a horrible situation while searching for the Yamatai kingdom. Lara is very likeable as a playable character because she is very capable, her mentor taught her how to fight hunt and deal with bad situations making her very resourceful in terrible situations.

Sam Nishimura

Sam is the best friend and resident damsel in distress, she is the camera woman of the crew (an unimportant back story element) and spends most of the game kidnapped. There’s more I can say but this is a strictly NON-SPOLIER REVIEW!

Conrad Roth

Roth is my favorite character, but that’s unimportant, he is Lara’s comrade trainer and family friend. Roth plays the role of turning Lara into a lethal force and is her father figure, which is interesting because it appeares Lara knew her father well, he spends alot of the game either giving information or helping you survive in badass ways.

Father Mathias

The main antagonist in the game, and the most boring character, he leads a murderess cult called the Solarii who worships the kingdom of Yamatai and the sun queen Himiko. Most of his motives are revealed threw out the game but I’ll go into a none-spoiler answer: He shipwrecked here with a large crew and became a megalomaniac since he is crazy. It is deeper than that but not by much.

Score: 3/5

Gameplay

There is three elements of gameplay that appear in this game and I will go over them one by one.

Plat forming

This game relies heavy on a platforming element that tries to mask itself as puzzle solving, this element of the game, it is heavily influenced by the uncharted style of gameplay (I know Tomb Raider came first but the last games had a very different feel) which isn’t a bad thing since it works. There is a ton of feats that would put long jumping Olympian’s to shame but that’s the fun of the game. Lara can also fall from very high up without taking a ton of damage, so you can have some fun testing that out, and this works out because that lets you do fun stunts like: jumping off a high building onto a zipline that leads into a gun battle.

Gun Battling and sneaking

The action parts of the game are plagued with clunky controls and distracting story elements. Lara will frequently cry or make sounds of panic in mid battle which, in my not so humble opinion, is distracting and harms my moral in battle. The stealth part of the game is humerous to watch if you decide to stealth kill someone at close range, Lara will break her enemies neck which is annoying time consuming and though the victim makes noise but yet no one will hear him.

Sliding missions

A good chunk of the game is dedicated to Lara doing something stupid which causes her to go into a hellish slide. In these Slides you will have to dodge random problems and do quick time events or die horribly, but the worst part is that these parts feel forced in for example: Lara see’s a rushing river and decides to cross it by trying to swim it. No human being would think that was a good idea and yet she does things like this on a very frequent basis. Before I move on to the next segments I’ll end this with saying if you fail a quicktime or a slide you die in some of the worst ways you can imagine.

Score: 3.5/5

Extras

The Extra part of this game is I will talk about the multiplayer briefly. The Multiplayer aspect of the game is an online player vs player match types (death, capture the flag and team) and sports limited graphics, so nothing special.